If you could invite any three people from history to your house for dinner and conversation (assuming, of course, they could magically all speak our common language), whom would you select? What would you want to discuss?
Author Archives: James Scott Bell
Will We All Be Grunting Soon?
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Remember when we used to call them “grammar schools”? The idea was to train the young in the foundational rules for communicating in our language, especially in written form. Such teaching has fallen on hard times. Fewer and fewer teachers are adequately trained or interested in the rules of grammar. The fallout can be seen everywhere, from schoolrooms to boardrooms, from books to blogs.
If this slide continues, what will we be left with? Grunting, I suppose. We could end up communicating like the monster in Young Frankenstein:
In years past, all journals and newspapers had crusty editors who were deeply grounded in rules of style and grammar, and could train their cubs to be more precise and understandable. But this species of grammarian has largely died out. And with the onset of digital and instant media, the flubs are flowing more freely than cheap beer at a bowling alley wedding.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m no grammar expert. Unless I’m reminded, I don’t know a gerund from Geritol. To me, conjugation sounds like what prison inmates get when their wives visit. Nevertheless, I try to do service to the King’s English by regularly checking reference books like Write Right!
So allow me to cite a few examples of grammatical drift I’ve come across recently, mostly from “reputable” sites. They may seem innocuous now, but they’re like pebbles that precede a landslide. Let us watch our wording lest we get buried under rocks of perpetual bafflement!
Apple have been focused on your point of sale dollars for hardware.
A verb has to agree with its subject. Apple is singular, so has is required.
He has been more prolific in his career than either Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach.
It’s either/or, not either/and.
Yet why does more than 1 billion devices worldwide, in all socioeconomic strata and often most dominant in emerging markets, only account for 6% of publishers’ sales typically?
Can you spot the error in this mangle of a sentence?
The best hope for conference chaos this Fall after the Big Ten canceled football season lied with Ohio State.
Hoo boy. The lie, lay, lied, laid distinction is one of the trickiest in our language. I confess it confuses me still. But it doesn’t take an English degree to sense that lied is wrong. What to do? Consult a stylebook, or find an online explanation like this one that explains the differences.
Another editorial judgment is whether to just rewrite the sentence for greater clarity. In this case, I would. First off, is the writer saying people “hope” for “conference chaos”? Or is the gist of the thought that a hopeful end to the chaos would come via Ohio State?
I suspect it’s the latter, and if so the main thought of the sentence is deflated somewhat by its structure. We need a rearrangement and a comma. And we don’t need that big capital F jumping out at us in the middle. (Almost always, a season should be lowercase. How do I know? I looked it up!)
I would recast the sentence thus:
After the Big Ten canceled football season, the best hope for ending conference chaos this fall was Ohio State.
Instead, Costas had to take a pop shot at one of the sports he helped cover for a large part of his 38-year career at NBC Sports.
Did Costas throw a can of soda? Or was this a potshot (one word), an off-hand critical remark?
How Zoom’s new features will fair in the video conferencing landscape.
One wonders how Zoom can put up a Ferris wheel and sell cotton candy in a conferencing landscape.
They’ve heard the writing on the wall.
A neat trick!
We have to tip your hat to them.
I’ll do what I please with my own hat, thank you very much.
Now the FBI goes to work pouring over surveillance videos.
Pouring what? Coffee? Won’t that hinder the investigation? I’ll need to pore over more articles to figure out what they’re doing.
We were all waiting with baited breath.
I wonder what they baited their breath with? I’ve tried anchovies, but my wife objects.
In the absence of editors, what’s a writer in a hurry to do? (Here I’m distinguishing articles and the like from novel-length books, where we do have more time for beta readers and editors. See also Terry’s excellent self-editing tips.)
I know there are digital grammar apps, like Grammarly, that might help. Most of them require a subscription and I’ve heard they’re not 100% accurate. At least you should take the time to check your doc with Word’s spelling-and-grammar tool, and listen to your document via text-to-speech.
Words and how they sound are our bread and butter. So don’t jam up the works with clunky grammar. That’s just not fare to our readers, who tip our hats to us.
Reader Friday: Jump Inside a Book
As a kid I loved the Gumby (and his pal, Pokey) animated shorts, especially for the times when they would “jump into” a famous novel and appear in the world of that story. They’d interact with the characters and influence outcomes.
If you could jump into a novel and be part of the story, what novel would you choose, and what would you do inside that world?
Fall Back in Love With Writing
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Leroy “Satchel” Paige
On July 9, 1948, the oldest rookie ever to make the big leagues took the mound for the Cleveland Indians. He also happened to be one of the greatest pitchers of all time.
Leroy “Satchel” Paige was forty-two years old. The Indians were in a pennant race that July, and their acquisition helped get them to the World Series. Paige finished the season with a 6-1 record, a 2.48 ERA and 43 strikeouts.
It was a bittersweet achievement. Paige, one of the immortals of the old Negro Leagues (and thus kept out of the Majors by the color barrier) showed the large crowds who came to see him what he was capable of. Indeed, Joe DiMaggio once hit against Paige in his prime, in an exhibition game, and called Paige the greatest pitcher he ever faced.
After a disappointing 1949 season, the Indians dropped Paige, but he wasn’t through. He came back with the St. Louis Browns in 1951. In 1952 he was so effective he was named to the American League All-Star team.
Amazingly, Paige’s career continued. He bounced around on barnstorming teams and in the minors, still showing occasional flashes of brilliance. At the age of 56 he pitched for a minor league team in the Pacific Coast League. And then, at 59 (that’s five-nine!) on a whim from the colorful promoter Charles O. Finley, Paige came out to pitch in one game for the old Kansas City Athletics, facing the Boston Red Sox.
Satchel Paige faced ten batters that day in 1965, allowing only one hit (a double by Carl Yastrzemski) and getting his last major league strikeout. Astonishing!
Satchel Paige was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1971.
In addition to his pitching prowess, Paige was something of a down-home philosopher. He handed out advice like, “If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.” Now who can argue with that?
Paige never made a lot of money, yet he kept pitching. Why? Simply because he loved baseball.
You’ve got to love what you do to keep on doing it. We had an intriguing discussion some time ago on whether a writer should think about quitting. Our own Kris (P.J. Parrish) said the only valid reason should be that “the whole process of writing has become something of a chore, a duty rather than a delight.”
Every writer feels that way from time to time. Last year (the late, unlamented, atrocious, and altogether train-wreck known as 2020) induced quite a wave of such feelings. I wrote about why that is here.
So we need to fight back with delight. We need to keep in touch with our inner Satchel Paige and keep writing because we love it.
To rekindle that romance:
- Remember the good times
“We’ll always have Paris,” Bogart tells Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Think back to the best times you’ve had as a writer. When did you feel the most joy? When did somebody tell you something that made you feel good about your writing? Dwell on that. You can do it again.
- Write something you might throw away
Almost always we write with the goal of having readers pitch us some dough and become fans. When you have that in mind, it can sometimes sit there like Poe’s raven, mocking you. The way to chase that bird away is to write something just for you, for fun. I like flash fiction (under 1k words) for this. It doesn’t take long, and if I don’t ever publish it anywhere, no big deal. It frees me up to write just as I wish. And sometimes that turns into the germ of a full-length idea.
- Re-read favorite passages
For me, nothing gets me back into the writing mood like re-reading select passages from favorite novels. Like this from Ask the Dust, John Fante’s 1939 novel about a young writer longing for success:
Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town, I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. A day and another day and the day before, and the library with the big boys in the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there, and I went to see them, Hya Dreiser, Hya Mencken, Hya, hya: there’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf. Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett, not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!
How’s your (writing) love life these days? What do you do to romance it?
Reader Friday: How Fast?
We’ll Be Back
Time For Merry Rest
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen.”
One of the oldest Christmas carols, going back at least to the early 1700s, has a curious comma in it. I daresay most carolers and children who have sung this holiday favorite think the lyric is God rest ye, merry gentlemen. But if you step back a moment, an obvious question arises: if the gentlemen are already merry, what need is there for God to give them rest?
Indeed, the next verse indicates the gents are in some “dismay.” The rest of the stanza reminds them of the Savior and being saved from “Satan’s power.” These are “tidings of comfort and joy.”
The actual lyric places the comma here: God rest ye merry, gentlemen. In other words, may God grant you rest and make you merry, you gentlemen who are bustling around full of anxiety over this and that, and forgetful of the true meaning of Christmas.
Anyone out there carrying around an excess of anxiety these days? Okay, you can all put your hands down now. (Reminds me of the Drew Carey joke: “Hate your job? There’s a group for that. It’s called Everybody, and we meet at the bar.”)
We all can use some merry rest! To get practical, may I make three December suggestions:
- Watch less news
None at all might be the best idea. You can catch up in January. Use the time to finally get around to that book you’ve wanted to read. Watch a holiday movie or two (yes, you can include Die Hard if you like). Mrs. B and I are listening to more classical music. We set the radio to KUSC, 91.5 FM in L.A., and leave it on in the background. So much more restful than the sniping prattle of the Fourth Estate.
- Do something for someone else
Let’s bring kindness back into fashion. Go out of your way to open a door for someone. Let that car go in front of you in the fast food line. If you walk by a cop, firefighter, paramedic or soldier, say, “Thank you.”
Donate to a charity.
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
- Write a blessings letter
Your grandmother used to tell you, “Count your blessings.” Take some time to write them down. I know it is harder for some than others. Suffering is part of our world, and always will be. But reminding ourselves of what we can be thankful for is a healing balm. Indeed, studies over the past decade have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed. Anybody up for that?
We’ve just been through a year like no other in our lifetime, and up ahead things look foggy still. Let’s resolve to do 2021 the pulp fiction way:
Keep Calm and Type On
We now bring the curtain down on another year at Kill Zone. Can you believe it? We’ve been here since August, 2008! A pause to catch our collective breath is called for, so tomorrow we begin our annual two-week hiatus. See you right back here on January 4.
Until then, God rest ye merry, TKZers!
On Using Humor in Fiction
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
I received the following email the other day, and present it here with the sender’s permission.
Dear Mr. Bell,
Your Great Courses lectures on writing best-selling fiction are packed with helpful information, and because of them I’m now making progress with my fiction-writing. But I struggle with humor, since I am not naturally funny. I rarely come out with anything that makes people laugh, and when I do, it’s usually accidental.
I’ve begun reading Try Fear, and am impressed by how masterfully you inject humor into your fiction. Would you recommend a resource for learning to write humor?
I’m a children’s writer, with a couple of non-fiction articles and one book for the educational market to my credit, but I’ve caught the fiction bug and am attempting the leap from nonfiction to fiction. I’d be grateful for any suggestions you have on learning to write humor.
Great question, and one I don’t remember addressing before.
Let’s first distinguish between two types of book-length fiction: the humorous novel and the novel with humor. In the former case, the whole enterprise is based on getting laughs. Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a prime example. In the latter type of novel, humor is used for what the dramatists call “comic relief.” Shakespeare employed this device frequently, most famously with the gravediggers in Hamlet.
As to the first type, I don’t have anything to offer, except: proceed with caution. It takes a rare talent—like a Douglas Adams or a Carl Hiaasen—to succeed with this kind of novel. Also note that comic novels don’t sell much as compared to their more serious cousins. Early in his career Dean Koontz tried his hand at a humorous novel, a la Catch-22, and determined this was not a genre that paid. Since going serious, with humor sprinkled it, Mr. Koontz has made a few bucks.
So let’s talk about humor used on occasion in an otherwise serious novel. Why have it at all? Comic relief, as the name implies, is a spot within the suspense where the audience can catch its breath. It delivers a slight respite before resuming the tension. It’s sort of like the pause at the top of a roller-coaster. You take in a breath, look at the nice view and then…BOOM! Off you go again. It adds a pleasing, emotional crosscurrent to the fictive dream, which is what readers are paying for, after all.
I see three main ways to weave humor into a novel: situational, descriptive, and conversational.
Situational
You can insert a scene, or a long beat within a scene, that takes its comic effect from the situation the character finds himself in. For an example I turn to the great Alfred Hitchcock, who almost always has comic relief in his masterpieces of suspense.
Like the auction scene in North by Northwest. Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) has been mistakenly tagged as a U.S. secret agent by a group of bad guys. At one point, Thornhill walks into a fancy art auction to confront the chief bad guy (James Mason). But now he’s stuck there with three deadly henchmen waiting in the wings to send him to the eternal dirt nap.
So Thornhill hatches a plan. Act like a nut and cause a commotion so the cops will come in and arrest him, saving him from the assassins. This is how it goes down:
How do you find situational humor? You look at a scene and the circumstances and push beyond what is expected. Most humor is based upon the unexpected. That’s what makes for the punch line in a joke, for example. So make a list of possible unexpected actions your character might take or encounter, and surely one of them will be the seed of comic relief.
Descriptive
When you are writing in First Person POV, the voice of the narrator can drop in a bit of humor when describing a setting or another character. The master of colorful description was, of course, Raymond Chandler, through the voice of his detective, Philip Marlowe:
It must have been Friday because the fish smell from the Mansion House coffee-shop next door was strong enough to build a garage on. (“Bay City Blues)
From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. (The High Window)
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. (Farewell, My Lovely)
The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. (The Long Goodbye)
For descriptive humor, listen to your character. Use a voice journal to let the character riff for awhile. You’ll unearth a nugget or two of descriptive gold.
Conversational
Dialogue presents many possibilities for humor. First, you can create characters who have the potential for funny talk. Second, you can take create conversational situations where such talk is possible. I had two great aunts who lived together in their later years. They had a way of subtly sniping at each other over minor matters, which was always a source of amusement to me. So I put them in my thriller, Long Lost, as two volunteers at a small hospital:
Just inside the front doors, two elderly women sat at a reception desk. They were dressed in blue smocks with yellow tags identifying them as volunteers. One of them had slate-colored hair done up in curls. The other had dyed hers a shade of red that did not exist in nature.
They looked surprised and delighted when Steve came in, as if he were the Pony Express riding into the fort.
They fought for the first word. Curls said, “May I help—” at the same time Red said, “Who are you here to—”
They stopped and looked at each other, half-annoyed, half-amused, then back at Steve.
And spoke over each other again.
“Let me help you out,” Steve said. “I’m looking for a doctor, a certain—”
“Are you hurt?” Curls said.
“Our emergency entrance is around to the side,” Red said.
“No, I—”
“Oh, but we just had a shooting,” Curls said.
“A stinking old man,” Red added.
“Not stinking,” Curls said. “Stinko. He was drunk.”
“When you’re drunk you can stink, too,” Red said.
“That’s hardly the point,” Curls said.
And it goes on like that.
I think you can develop an ear for this kind of humor by soaking in the masters of verbal comedy. Start with Marx Brothers, especially their five best movies: The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup.
Listen to the classic conversational routines of Bob Newhart (available on YouTube). My favorite is “The Driving Instructor.”
Also on YouTube: Bob & Ray. The great thing about their skits is how they play them with dead seriousness. That’s where the humor comes from, which is a lesson for writers. This isn’t about jokes. It’s about natural humor found in a fully developed dramatic situation.
If you want to do some reading on the subject, you might pick up a copy of Steve Allen’s How to Be Funny. Allen was one of the great verbal wits.
There’s also a little gem of a book on writing comedy. It’s the nearly-lost wisdom of Danny Simon, Neil’s older brother (whom Neil and Woody Allen both credit with teaching them how to write narrative comedy). Danny Simon never wrote a book on the subject. He did teach a famous comedy writing class in Los Angeles. Thankfully, one of his students took copious notes and organized them for posterity. That student was me, and the little book is here.
The floor is now open for discussion on these matters. Meanwhile, I can’t resist leaving you with my all-time favorite Bob & Ray routine. Enjoy!
Put Your Lead Between Opposite Characters
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca
In Write Your Novel From the Middle, I explain a crucial moment in a plot where the lead character must make a choice. It usually involves a moral dilemma, with the character’s realization of who he is and how his flaws affect the characters around him. He then has to make a decision about what kind of person he is going to be: Stay the same and continue to hurt people? Or find his way to redemption?
In the middle of Casablanca, for example, we see Rick being a mean drunk toward Ilsa, who has just poured her heart out to him explaining why she had to leave him in Paris. As soon as she tearfully exits the scene, Rick drops his head into his hands, and we know he’s looking with disgust at himself, as if in a mirror. That’s why I call this the “mirror moment” which usually happens smack dab in the middle of a novel or film. Indeed, it is the moment that tells us what the story is really all about.
Casablanca does something else to magnify Rick’s dilemma—it places Rick between two characters who represent opposite moral poles. On one side is Louis Renault, the corrupt French police captain whose sole purpose in life is holding on to his cushy job and bedding desperate women trying to get out of Casablanca. He isn’t loyal to the French or the Germans; he’s loyal to Louis, and does what he can to keep from rocking the boat.
On the other side of Rick is Victor Laszlo, the heroic resistance fighter. Rick admires him, but isn’t going to help him, even though Louis has announced his impending arrest in Rick’s café. In addition to his avowed detachment, Rick has another reason not to help Laszlo—turns out he’s married to Ilsa, the woman Rick believes betrayed him.
What Casablanca is really about, then, is how Rick gets to the decision not just to help Laszlo and Ilsa, but even to sacrifice his life (potentially) to do it. And in the famous ending twist, Rick’s moral reformation inspires Louis to make a similar choice. It’s “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Hold that thought.
The other night I watched the Paul Newman film, Hud (1963). This superb movie (based on Larry McMurtry’s novel Horseman, Pass By) won three well-deserved Academy Awards: Best Actress (Patricia Neal); Best Supporting Actor (Melvyn Douglas); and Best Cinematography (James Wong Howe). The protagonist is Lon Bannon. He lives on a modest cattle ranch with his Granddad and uncle, Hud, and Alma, their housekeeper.
Paul Newman and Melvyn Douglas in Hud
Lon has just turned seventeen. He’s on the cusp of adulthood. And he’s offered two paths. The first is from his beloved Granddad, who has built his entire life on working hard and doing what’s right and honest. The other is from Hud, whom Lon admires for his way with women and ease at being a “good ol’ boy.” As Hud explains to Lon, “When I was your age, I couldn’t get enough of anything.” Lon is increasingly leaning in Hud’s direction.
Then tragedy strikes the ranch. A herd of cattle Granddad recently brought in from Mexico has foot-and-mouth disease. All of the cows have to socially distance be exterminated. Hud tries to convince his father to sell off the bad cows to unsuspecting neighbors. Granddad, of course, will have none of it. “You’re an unprincipled man, Hud,” he says.
“Don’t let that fuss you,” Hud snaps back. “You’ve got enough for both of us.” Indeed, deep down, Hud would like nothing better than for Granddad to kick the bucket so Hud can take his half of the ranch and do what he pleases with it.
Once again, the mirror moment happens in the middle of the film. Lon and Granddad have gone to a movie together and are having a bite to eat at a diner. Hud comes stumbling in with a woman—another man’s wife. There’s a tense exchange between Hud and Granddad, who clasps his chest and keels over. Hud and Lon get him into a pickup truck and drive him back to the ranch. As Granddad sleeps between them, Lon says:
LON: He’s beginning to look kind of worn out, isn’t he? Sometimes I forget how old he is. Guess I just don’t want to think about it.
HUD: It’s time you started.
LON: I know he’s gonna die someday. I know that much.
HUD: He is.
LON: Makes me feel like somebody dumped me into a cold river.
HUD: Happens to everybody. Horses, dogs, men. Nobody gets out of life alive.
That “dumped into a cold river” is Lon’s awakening to the stakes. He’s going to have to make a decision on how to live life once Granddad is gone.
Two plot points happen that turn Lon away from Hud. First is Hud’s attempted rape of Alma, which Lon breaks up. Alma has been through the grinder of life, and Lon considers her good and kind. Seeing what Hud tries to do to her disgusts him.
The second point is when Lon and Hud are driving back to the ranch from a carouse in town and find Garnddad crawling on the road. He’d fallen off his horse, and is in bad shape. Lon cradles his head, tells him to hang on, that everything will be all right. Granddad says, “I don’t know if I want it to be.” He looks over at Hud. “Hud’s here waitin’ on me. And he ain’t a patient man.” With that he gives up the ghost.
Hud’s ill treatment of Granddad is the final straw for Lon. He decides to pack up and leave, not quite sure where he’ll end up. Hud makes one last pitch for Lon to stay on.
HUD: I guess you’ve come to be of your granddaddy’s opinion that I ain’t fit to live with. That’s too bad. We might’ve whooped it up some. That’s the way you used to want it.
LON: I used to. So long, Hud.
Lon walks away. Hud goes into the ranch house and grabs a beer from the icebox. He returns to the door to look at his departing nephew. Then, with a dismissive wave, he shuts the door.
That’s the end. Hud is all alone. No one to love him, no one for him to love. In this instance, contrary to Casablanca, the immoral character does not change, and we are shown the tragedy of that choice.
So consider setting your Lead between two characters who represent opposites on the moral scale. This will deepen the Lead’s dilemma and the story as a whole.
Comments welcome.
Try Writing Sprints to Overcome Writing Setbacks
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Okay, let’s not mince words. 2020 has been one hell of a year. This is how it’s felt:
Getting whapped in the face over and over is not fun. But, as the Stoics used to say, it is what it is. It’s what you do with the “is” that counts.
This applies to any field of endeavor. No one gets to have a successful career without confronting and overcoming setbacks. Some will be big, some small, but come they will.
Steve Jobs built Apple into a powerhouse, only to be forced out in 1985. Twelve years later Apple was circling the drain. Jobs was brought back in and turned Apple around. When he died at age 56, Jobs was worth $7 billion.
Wally Amos started Famous Amos Cookie Company in 1975. I was there. I was walking along Sunset Boulevard one day that year when a friendly man in a cool hat and holding a plate of cookies stopped me. He was standing outside a little A-frame store with a giant cookie on the sign. So I sampled one of his little beauties and was hooked. I bought a bag. And shook hands with Wally Amos.
But then came the setback. In 1985 Amos was forced to sell the company. He was prohibited from using his name to start another. So what did he do? He started the Uncle Noname Cookie Company. Faced more setbacks. Started another company, and at age 84 is working on another. This is called never giving up.
Writers have their unique challenges. When their career is in the hands of another, there’s always the possibility of being dropped if things don’t work out financially. This can lead to some depressing conversations. The screenwriter played by Albert Brooks in his movie, The Muse, had one such talk:
Setbacks are often due to circumstances beyond our control. I know one writer who got a mega book deal, the first hardcover coming out with great fanfare on the usual release day, Tuesday. Only this Tuesday happened to be September 11, 2001. Suffice to say the book stalled and so, for a time, did the author’s career. But he came back.
So did a guy named Gilstrap. Back in 2003 “everyone told me that my career as a writer was over.” Now what have we got? A hit series and another one on the way. (Read John’s account of what happened here.)
Among my writing friends are several “midlist writers” who were phased out, dropped, or otherwise shown the door by their former publishers. Most of them are now happily publishing independently—which in and of itself is the most amazing “comeback machine” ever handed to the writing community.
Then there are setbacks that come from life itself: pandemics, family issues, physical challenges, mental fatigue. All this can affect our work.
How to handle them? My advice has always been along the lines of the flippant doctor’s prescription for insomnia: Just sleep it off. I’ve counseled writers to keep writing, or “write your way through” whatever it is that knocks you flat.
But I know that’s easy to say and hard to do. So let me suggest an exercise I call writing sprints. This is where you set yourself a goal of writing 250 words—a nifty 250—as fast as you can. The three rules of writing sprints are: 1) Write without stopping; 2) Don’t judge what you’re writing as you write; and 3) Wait ten minutes before you look over what you’ve done and decide what to do with it.
I’ve broken writing sprints into five categories:
1. Scene sprints
That scene you’re about to work on? Pick a spot in the scene, any spot, and write 250 words. It could be the beginning, or it could be the “hot spot” where the meat of the scene is taking place. You can also write an ending, too. There is no wrong decision.
2. Emotion sprints
This is my favorite. Find a place where your viewpoint character is feeling something deeply. Then write 250 words just on that feeling. Expand it. Use internal thoughts. Use metaphors. Follow tangents wherever they lead. Later, you’ll use the best of this in your writing. Even if it’s only one line, you’ll have found gold.
3. Dialogue sprints
I love dialogue. It’s fun and easy. In a sprint, don’t use quote marks or attributions. Just the dialogue between characters. Let them improvise. Let them argue. Let them reveal things. Usually you’ll find something that is delightfully surprising (and it will delight your readers, too).
4. Description sprints
Go wild on describing a person, place, or thing. I often close my eyes for this, and let my imagination give me pictures.
5. Random Word sprints
Open a dictionary at random (I used to carry a pocket dictionary for this, back in the days when it was acceptable to write in a coffee house). Pick the first word you see that is a noun, verb, or adjective. Write 250 words on whatever that word triggers. You can apply it to your WIP if you like. Example: You find the word bloodhound. You can just start writing and follow rabbit trails (hey, just like that dog!) Or can ask yourself, “How might a bloodhound figure in my story?” and then go. Maybe your Lead can have a memory of a bloodhound. Or maybe he feels like a bloodhound. Okay: what does he think about that feeling? Keep writing!
Here’s another benefit. After you’ve done those 250 words, you’ll almost always feel the flow. You’ll want to write some more. So write! Because setbacks won’t stop a writer who produces the words.
What’s a setback you’ve faced as a writer? What did you do to overcome it? Or are you still in process?